MrBallen (Former Navy SEAL): If You Feel Lost, Here's How To Turn Your Life Around In 2025!

I was in Afghanistan in 2014 as a Navy SEAL we're in the middle of this gunfight and a grenade came over the wall and it detonated and I'm waiting to either be shot by the enemy or going to bleed to death and all that was running through my head was and that's the way I think people should look at their lives so interesting cuz I've never actually heard someone give that kind of advice before Mr bullan is a former Navy SEAL turned Master Storyteller and content creator who uses his Battlefield experiences and personal failures to

inspire educate and help people overcome challenges to achieve their goals my family were very successful people with pullit Sur prises PhD and then there's me getting into street fights and about to get expelled but it took becoming a colossal failure to realize if you want to fix this you have start with saying it's my fault and then do something about it but then fear becomes the thing keeping people from doing it and it's the very select number of people in this life say I'm going to still do that thing that scares the out of me

that have the best and most fulfilling life and so I decided to become a Navy SE because it's was only a really small percent that make it through the ruing mentally torturing training and what's the similarities that you noticed between the people that made it two words it's but then I realized the reality of the job you kill people and I had really leaned into being as like Alpha as I possibly could be but there were just some things that I did and I just I struggled so so bad I had to face My Demons

what have you learned about dealing with demons if you begin to have those thoughts the only way I have found to sort of cope with them is this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment

to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much John yes there are clues in your early context that suggest you might have walked the path that you've walked in your life but there's also clues that suggest you absolutely would never have done what you've done yeah so taking

me back to that early context yeah what do I need to know about that environment the influences of that environment to understand how you ended up where you are today I I think it all starts with you know the family I was born into where like very successful academic people so I was born in a in a town called Quincy Massachusetts it's just south of Boston Mass and you know my my mother father and two sisters are like Brilliant Minds in like the academic sense of the word just like brilliant uh you know my sister

one of my sisters uh has gone on to win two pullit Sur prises my dad's won a pullitzer prize my this not even flex but to give you a sense of the people in my life my other sister like has a PHD and she like worked out of a Harvard lab my my mom is a professional writer and then there's me when I was growing up I uh I I could have done well in school you know but I didn't want to it was sort of like my my form of rebellion was being a bad

student willfully and I would like go out and party with my friends and just was like trying to be sort of like a bad kid in a way and also like the town I grew up in was sort of a it was not a place where academics really thrived it's like a really working class like hard and tough place I mean quin's becoming much much nicer but it was a little bit of a tough place and I sort of wanted to be like an edgy like tough guy and so I'd like get into street fights

and get my ass kicked and like I'd like stay out drinking with my friends but what it did is it set me up for like colossal failure uh by the time I got to college I got into college because my mom the professional writer wrote my college essay and my grades were horrible in high school in fact so bad that when I sent off my application the the school got in touch with me and they were like hey your grades are not really what we're looking for but boy that essay was so beautiful we're going

to give you a chance and so I get into college I go to the University of Massachusetts out in western Mass it's like where a lot of kids where I was growing up that's where I went to school but it's a big party school and I just immediately bombed first semester like I I got a 1.016 GPA which it should have been like a zero I basically didn't go to class I uh I was involved in this this Riot so at some point the uh our football team which was a team that no one cared

about even the people who went to the school we didn't care about it no offense to the Minute Men they're very good now but at the time in 2006 they weren't they made it to like this conference game or something this is like not big time D1 this is like D1 daa so like very high level football but not going to be on TV or anything and the the college the student body again they don't really care about the football team but for some reason when they lost this game it just like instilled this need

to Riot on campus and it was like concentrated in this one area of Campus where I happened to live and I like went out there and I was like breaking windows and being this horrible kid and the security cameras everywhere recording you and it got to the point where at the end of the semester there was like this Witch Hunt to to find the people that have been involved in this Riot and there was like the the website had post the college Police website had posted all these images of just faces of people in the

crowd that were a part of it and anybody could anonymously name people if they saw them and it was like everybody got expelled and I found pictures of me and I just got my grades back 1.016 and at the same time I've been telling my brilliant parents yeah I'm doing great in school things are going really well getting good grades and I had to tell them like actually it's the opposite and I'm probably going to get expelled if I don't withdraw so my dad comes out to the school and he like sits down with the

dean who also says John has all these violations of living in the dorm like noise complaints and being a jerk that we're going to kick him out of the dorms even if he stays at the school he has to live live off campus and my my mom and dad are like you're coming home uh we're done with this like you're an adult and you can either like live at home and go to school or get a job but like you're going to be an adult and so I come home what age I was 18 18

so I come home and I uh I was living in my mom's basement in quiny and I remember the first couple of weeks I was home I I actually felt mad at my parents like how dare they make me withdraw from the school even though there's all this information that like it's completely my fault but I I had like an epiphany when I was literally in my mom's basement when I sort of realized like oh this is my fault like I have created like a habit pattern and a way of thinking that's put me in

my mom's basement with no Direction like I've been gifted all these opportunities that I've squandered and something sort of changed in my head where it was like I don't want to be a screw-up I don't want to be that I'm looking at my my family members as being so successful and I just was like I can't be that I'm suddenly becoming self-aware that that's the path I'm on I'm going to be the guy that like floundered everything and and didn't amount to anything and so I just made it simple I was like I'm just going

to like go to a local school get good grades and like graduate from college that's going to be my focus for now and I did that I went to a local school I got my grades up I actually transferred back to the school that I withdrew from to finish out my my couple of years in college but the it was like a drug like having a goal that I was working towards like doing something that was worth my time and like studying I I I was like struggling with school but I I I worked so

hard I was in the library all the time like feeling like getting to feel what it feels like to be working towards a goal and achieving it was like really addictive for me and so by the time I was like in my last year in college I actually ironically had no clue what I would do Post College it was sort of like well the goal was just to graduate college I don't really have a clue what's next and and I I I thought about briefly becoming a lawyer or something I because I was studying philosophy

in English because I like those two subjects and they sort of fit the mold but I had always sort of had this draw this calling to to serve in the military because my uh just some some friends of mine in high school went off to serve uh in in the military in 2006 like they went to Iraq and Afghanistan but I but I wanted to do something really hard in the military because I needed like a big goal you know and it like graduating college was this goal that I had achieved and I was like

I want to do something hard in the military and that's when I got turned on to the SEAL Teams and the cool thing about the Navy SEAL Teams is virtually anybody can apply to be a seal uh you know you have to like have the right physical fitness you have to be a citizen there's a few things but basically anybody can try out but it's only those who s who survive the training that become seals and it's a really small percentage of people and it just really was the thing that was like wait a minute

if I do that if I go through like this this baptism of going through this rigorous training I'll become a guy that will no longer be viewed as like the the screw-up in high school who sort of got it together with college I'll be able to reinvent myself I'll be able to to serve in the military which is something I I felt the calling to do it's a career that I can kind of progress into and it's a big freaking challenge that's going to require a whole bunch of training and prep before I get to

go and so I kind of just shifted my goal from graduate college to become a Navy SEAL and everything fell in line and then naturally after that I became a YouTuber which is an even longer story but basically I yeah became a seal and then I got hurt medically retired and then I basically posted something online that went viral and I love telling stories as you can see from this long intro uh and I just kept telling stories and now I'm here so but it started with like setting a goal and achieving it and it's

which sounds so basic but I think a lot of people go through life just sort of doing stuff because because they were told to or they just sort of fell into it I found like setting a goal that's consciously something you care about for whatever reason and working hard to achieve it it like organizes your whole life and so my life starting with coming home from from college and being in the basement has been a series of set a goal and shoot for that goal and that's all that matters it's interesting because even before that

there was something that seemed to happen to you in that basement which I consider to be the starting place which is awareness yeah this like self-awareness and with that self-awareness came responsibility you said actually I need to stop blaming my Mom and Dad yeah there I have a role to play in this yeah and that's really really hard for I think for everybody to be truly aware of how you might be contributing to the circumstances of your own life it's a harsh truth when you realize it's your fault or or a big part of it

is your fault but that's what self-awareness is like taking responsibility for the good and the bad and what's your relationship been like with responsibility and like what's your view on the importance of that broadly I would say that when I was you know pre- basement moment I was definitely in the mindset of playing the victim and if something bad happened it was somebody else's fault and not taking responsibility for anything I was I was the guy that would come home from school and I'd tell my mom like you wouldn't believe it we had a test

today and Joey got a 50 I got a 65 but Joey got a 50 it's like you're sort of like that's the way you approach it versus like I failed the test um but when I sort of decided I would graduate college and organize my life around that and then become a seal I realized that it's not enough to simply just say I'm going to do this thing like you need to own like the entire process and like for example in uh in Seal training there were a couple moments where like I myself failed miserably

catastrophically at like tests and opportunities to to be a leader and I just like squandered it in in in a way so the way SEAL training works is it's very reputational like as you go along uh in training you know it's like the closer you get to graduation the the closer you get to being a real seal and so your instructors those are active duty seals and they're no longer viewing you towards the end of training as being just some like oh candidate now it's like you could be my teammate there's not too many of

us and so it changes from you aren't going to make it to you better do a good job because I might need your help you know down the line and I remember in the final part of training there's this confidence exercise where they basically expose your class to uh tiar guests which is something that's pretty standard in the military uh and the only thing they say is like this is a like it's all about mentality here it's a confidence booster it's going to suck it's going to make you want to feel like you're you're you're

dying from this gas and it's like a long exposure and they they they set you up in this like Square you're all just standing you're kneeling shoulder-to-shoulder if you will out in this open field on San Clemente Island in in in in California and all the instructors have their gas mess on and they have these pool sticks like that you would swap like trash out of a pool but at the end they have the Cs grenade canisters and they're like all right they put their mask on they they fire off these CS grenades this big

white smoke comes out and they hand they hold out the pole and you just you get covered in CS gas and the whole all you have to do is not run just stay here and take it that's the whole point and Ian it was like a figh ORF flight Instinct completely it was like before I and it was instant it wasn't like uh oh this is really bad what am I going to do what am I going to do it was like instantaneously I ran I had to get tackled by one of the instructors because

I was just out I wasn't even thinking it was like and nobody else ran this is the end of training and so afterwards it's like I was brought into the the amphitheater there's this little theater where they would teach us classes about ordinance and whatever and they were like Allan stand up and all my peers know I did this all the instructors know I did this and he just goes the main instructor he's like Allan you're a [ __ ] [ __ ] sit down he goes you're a [ __ ] [ __ ] and

I never want to serve with you and neither and neither should your classmates sit down and it was it and I had to from that point on for the rest of training wear uh these like it's almost like a bikini over my shorts and it was like the worst moment ever because i' I've made it so far into training but I knew and also by the way at this point we weren't even home I wasn't able to go home see my wife we're out at this island for a month you don't you work seven days

a week you're you are in training until you're done and the only choice was like own the fact that you did that don't make excuses for it like let this show people my actual strength which seems funny because I did the thing I'm not supposed to do but instead of like running from it literally own it take responsibility for what you did and show people that you know what I'm prepared to show up for work every day wearing these [ __ ] Trunks and and be looked at as a lesser than to demonstrate that I'm

not there's some something really important in that that's really um really also critical to business but just really critical to anyone that's professional or in a relationship which is if you make a mistake you get the second opportunity which is how you respond to the mistake you made and in fact so many times in business you know when I was running a marketing business we'd have clients and we might drop the ball in some way but we can actually make the relationship stronger than it was before the mistake by how we responded so making a

quick phone call apologizing taking responsibility yeah I mean I think that there definitely were some people that did carry that sort of like stigma into the teams because right after we finished this we kind of went into the SEAL Teams but I I do think that there was definitely some people that and I'm not even tooting my own horn I really think this happened that as a result of that moment knew they could like trust that I was prepared to sort of like I'm going to take responsibility for me I'm going to do what I'm

supposed to do I'm going to be the best teammate I can be even at my lowest you're still going to get the best version of me and that doesn't mean I think I'm better than anybody else it just means I'm an adult and I think that's that's a big part of being an adult is responsibility is ultimately owning those mistakes and sometimes your mistakes are painful and public and awful and that's the most important time to own them and like you said like that's your opportunity in some ways not just to rectify the mistake but

to become a stronger better version of yourself and I think that my mistake in college was a series of mistakes my first semester of screwing it up and getting sent back home but it was only when I recognized that it was my fault and I had to own that that I was able to graduate college and try to become a Navy SEAL and then in the process like have the the Cs grenade happen but in some ways that made me a better seal you know so I think that like in Failure comes the best opportunity

for Success which is something that I certainly didn't coin but it's the truth what is the Navy Seals because you know around the world I think people are aware of the term Navy Seals but we don't actually know fully what it is yeah so um every branch of I think basically every military in the world this is a a broad generalization but it's it's it's usually the case that virtually every branch of every military has some form of specialized unit that carries out Special Operations it's the stuff that you know the Call of Duty video

games and Modern Warfare those are based on like the idea of specialized combat units that that go out and do these kind of difficult and high stakes missions and so in in the US you have the Army the Navy the Marine Corps the Coast Guard and the Air Force and each of them have like their like respective Special Operations divisions like you have uh marine Special Operations and Marines you have the PJs the par rescue jumpers and the Air Force there there's multiple but of all the Special Operations units in America of all the different

branches you could make the case that the most and I'm get some Flack from people that disagree with me the most let's say well-known and potentially most skilled and I say that carefully because of course there are other there are other groups like The Green braids who are incredible at certain things but the the most skilled at multiple disciplines is very likely the Navy SEAL Teams and it's because the the acronym seal stands for Sea Air land so SE and a the idea is even though it's under the Navy which is sort of like Maritime

and and water the reality is that the SEAL Teams are a special operations group that can insert into virtually any any environment sea air or land they can also use multiple insertion platforms whether it's diving jumping going in on land it's like a highly vers Special Operations group whereas a lot of the other Special Operations groups not just in the United States but internationally are kind of specialized in certain geographies like you have Mountain Warfare Specialists you have like the Dutch have this incredible uh diving unit uh but the seals are like we do everything

and they also sort of came into prominence they they started in the 60s under JFK they really came into prominence post 911 because they were being sent out into the Middle East which is you know it's a landlock place but this Navy Special Operations unit was being very successful carrying out you know kinetic operations all across the Middle East so it's like a a very famous uh Jack of all trade Special Operations group that especially after the bin Laden raid as well that sort of made them celebrities but even before that they were very well

known as like the Jack of all trade Special Operations group and how long is training how long does it take to to get through training and pass the other end broadly speaking I would say it takes about two years uh but realistically it takes a little bit longer so you have um there's two ways to become a seal you either go in as an enlisted person so there's the enlisted component of the military which is somebody basically without a college degree who just like raises their hand and just serves like that's like the grunts of

the world those are the enlisted Community uh and then you have the officer side just somebody who at a minimum needs to have like a college degree to apply you go to like Officer school and in the SEAL Teams there's like a tiny tiny number of Officer seals and a massive number of enlisted seals but there are two very different Pathways into training if you go the officer route it's practically like a political appointment just to get an opportunity like it's so so difficult to even get a chance to try out that what you get

and it's because there's just like a handful of spots available that's that's really all it was so you have all these people on the enlisted side who actually have college degrees and could easily like become an officer in the military who let's say have other opportunities that they could pursue with their college degree but they want to be a seal you have this big number of people that are electing to go be enlisted to try out to be seals and that's important because it makes the enlisted side super competitive you have like these professional athletes

and you have like Olympians and you have like the best college athletes and you have MMA fighters and wrestlers and then like the random people like me who have no resume and you all just show up for the class in San Diego that technically is six months long but there's like before you've even jooin the Navy you need to basically compete for a spot to even have a chance to to try out and there's a whole application process before you've joined the Navy that can take years and then let's say you get your chance as

an enlisted person they're like okay you're going to get a chance to go well first you got to go to boot camp that's two months in Chicago and technically you can fail out of it but really you won't it's sort of like a suck it up and get through it but then at the end of boot camp at least when I went through you go to this other school which is like a prep school it's another two months in Chicago mind you you haven't even started training yet this is like potentially a year of pre-

Navy and now you're 4 months in to like you're in the Navy but you're not really in Seal training yet you go to this prep school where you like learn how to swim and run you you already know how to do these things but professional coaches work with you the Navy invests a lot of money and getting you really strengthened up and mentally strengthened because following the prep school you go to San Diego where you go through what's regarded as like the hardest part of SEAL training which is uh it's called buds Buds and it

stands for basic underwater demolition seal school and it's basically imagine whatever you think of as boot camp like military boot camp make it not two months long but 6 months long because most boot camps are about two and make it like a thousand times more difficult it's really the same Concepts it's like intense grueling physical emotional and mental like torture for six months and that's the part where everybody fails out and drops out that's like the if you made a movie about SEAL training you'd really only focus on the six months of buds training and

in fact you'd only focus on the first two months because that's the most physically challenging and then once you finish that you go to Advanced Training you're still not a seal yet it's another six months of like learning how to actually do the job so buds is like can you handle it Advanced Training or seal qualification training is I'm going to teach you how to shoot a gun with surgical Precision I'm going to teach you how to jump out of a plane I'm going to teach you how to like use this technology because you need

to know how to do the job so learn the job and then after that you'll go to like or we did anyways I don't know if they do this now you go to like a language school for a month or you'll go to like a medical school or some sort of school to give you additional qualifications and then you go to your team and so all told you have about two years from I want to be a Navy SEAL to I am now a Navy Seal two years is usually the mark and what's the similarities

that you noticed between the people that made it and didn't the thing that stands out honestly and this is what is pretty universally true although there's some outliers is the folks who show up to buds the candidates who show up to buds that have like an incredible resume there was a guy that showed up to training who literally played for the Arizona Diamondbacks he's like 6'5 looks just like a god and he's so humble like he's this big strong professional baseball player who I I actually have a memory specifically of playing with his character in

a video game and like there's there's other people who who are like professional football players and all that and he washed out so quick and a lot of the other guys with with big resumés like the sports and and big accomplishments they typically wash out really really quickly and it's not because they lack the physical to do it they don't they definitely don't it's that if you this is generalizing because this is not true of everybody but let's take the guy who played for the Diamondbacks so this person is used to being generally speaking the

very best person at what they do their whole lives and it's not because there's anything wrong with them it's just sort of a truth that's how you became a professional baseball player that's how it works in buds your instructors don't [ __ ] care about who you were and it's like a point they make they don't care at all about what you've done before in fact if they even suspect that you think you're special because you have some bullet point on your resume like playing for the Diamondbacks they will torture you and and see if

you really got it they will single you out and specifically make you feel terrible and and tell your class to like look at this guy he can't even do push-ups you play for the Diamondbacks you can't even do push-ups even though the guy's doing push-ups just fine but he's like look that doesn't even count that doesn't count do another one get in the water do this do that it's it's it's a mind game but the guy's like me who I went to Buds and I'm like I literally am a joke compared to the people that

are here I wasn't in great shape relative to my peers I'm certainly not a professional athlete the only thing on my resume is well I nearly flunked out of college but then managed to graduate college that is the extent of my resume I played a little baseball in high school and so for me I have very little to lose like either I'll make it and that'll be amazing and I'll get to do the thing I want to do or I won't and people will say that's about right the folks that go in that have the

resumes on on some level they expect to be really good even if they're humble and everybody in their personal lives also expects them to make it through because who wouldn't he played for the Diamondbacks expectation B it's brutal and and the course is too long to Simply gut your way through it the the level of physical discomfort that you experience in buds is so unbelievably high that it's not you got to want to be here that's the way they say it you got to want to be here if you want to make it through it's

you need to have something to hold on to in your brain that overrides the discomfort and it can't be oh I need to make everybody else happy I need to live up to expectations maybe that's strong enough for you for most people it's not like when you are at like your absolute lowest like what do you hold on to and it's for people like me it was like I have to prove myself to the like to myself I want to prove to myself that I can do this hard thing like it was not even about

serving in the military it was accomplishing this goal because I've set my mind to it and I want to I want to believe that I'm the guy that can set goals that are hard and Achieve them and so in in my worst moments I would go to that place where I'm like this is worth it to me but for other guys it's not and so so at the end when you graduate you look around and it's like a rag tag group of like short sort of weird looking guys that don't in any way embody like

what you would think of as like I mean some guys do some guys are unbelievable studs but it's like a rag tag group of guys that just didn't quit and a lot of it is because they had some sort of of chip on their shoulder that internally drove them and it allowed them to persevere when things got so bad cuz things get so bad in buds if I were to meet the guy in his mother's basement and then meet the guy who qualified from the Seals training yeah in terms of their mentality like their psychology

how would they be different what is it that what evidence does the guy that graduated from Seal training have that the other guy doesn't have what is that what's the difference I mean not just to like shamelessly cycle back to this idea of responsibility but I'm going to do that before when I first got to the basement I've just arrived I was really not even able to see what a mess I had made of my life it wasn't like I knew I had screwed up and was blaming other people it was more like my default

setting was this is somebody else's fault somebody did this to me like I actively remember being furious with my mom and dad for making me withdraw from college when I literally was about to get expelled I had a terrible GPA I couldn't afford to live in the in the dorms I had I had shown no there was no evidence to suggest I would succeed in college it wasn't until I was like home in the basement in the sort of like living in my mom's basement with no direction that I I just sort of naturally happened

I was like wait a minute it's you it's not them it's you and it seems so obvious now but it took falling to the bottom and also by the way kudos to my mom cuz she single mom she didn't give an f she was not like don't worry you'll figure it out she was like no you're going to get a job or you're going to move out or whatever and you're also going to pay rent while you're here and uh that's it like this is your fault and at first I'm mad but it it's sort

of like it became this arduous thing I had to overcome so it was like no self-awareness none and genuinely blaming the world for my problems to like probably if anything an extreme on the other side where like if you have already noticed I'm like talking about the Cs gas thing that I mentioned to you earlier mhm that's something that if that happened to other people I don't know if they' talk about it on such a public platform especially just in our in the seal Community like reputation is such a big thing that even talking about

things that other people know about but that cast you in sort of a bad light reputationally I think people would stay away from saying that you know like but for me I view it as a strength to highlight not only the things that I'm good at but the things that I've made a mess of and screwed up up because it shows other people that I'm secure so it's like Ultra self-aware and secure in my image the opposite as the basement kid and it took basically falling to the bottom being home no no new opportunities in

front of me other people are off at College succeeding and here I am in my mom's basement for it to sink in that like if you want to fix this you have to start with saying it's my fault and then do something about it and it worked this idea of Rock Bottom it's so interesting and it sounds um sounds pretty tragic that sometimes people do need to go to the bottom on their own yeah to realize that as the quote says the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of making a change

never heard that that's like 18 years old and I was in just dropped out of University and I saw someone on YouTube say the pain of um change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change and this kind of speaks to why some people sometimes when you listen to their stories it wasn't until they hit the basement that they were able to look themselves in the mirror and then take actions in the right direction but also sometimes when you try and help someone and you prop them

up like if your mother had gone listen uh here's some money and you know here's some uh you don't have to pay rent right she' be propping you up a little bit and keep away yeah I'm I'm trying to think about the kid that's listening to this right now that can relate yeah well the person in their life they they might be in a job or whatever that can relate to knowing that there's something quite not quite right in their life maybe they maybe they're at a point where they can start to look themselves in

the room and take responsibility but do they do they have to go to Rock Bottom to start to change their life well I think that part of the reason or I should say this is more of a general statement that kind of answers this um I in in a way was fortunate because when I hit rock bottom I I am a person that does not have what is it called paralysis by analysis I'm sort of an impulsive person for better or worse and so for me it's like once I hit that rock bottom it wasn't

hard for me to sort of quickly find a good North Star which the first one was College I'm I'm goingon to do college right M and then when I was nearing the end of college by this point I've sort of rided the ship at this point but I wanted a new goal it was like oh SEAL training that checks some boxes it's like I want to serve check like it's a super hard goal check I'll have to work for it like it it offers me a chance at reinvention and rebirth check okay good like I

jumped to that that's what I do I think there are plenty of people and I'm this is my guess I don't know if it's true who maybe have already hit rock bottom and they want to make a change they know it's their fault or whatever situation that they they know they've contributed to it but they don't know what to do next and there's so many choices think about it if you're at Rock Bottom in some ways you have every choice in the world to make and I think that one of the things that I certainly

preach when I talk about this at all which I guess in situations like this is you don't need like a perfect idea you just need something that checks enough boxes for you to be worth doing so for me it was like okay I'm in my mom's basement I've done this to myself I am the reason I'm not at school I'm the reason that like my parents are embarrassed about their son it's my fault what do I need to do okay well I should I should graduate school because that that demonstrates that what happened at UMass

is is fixable I I can graduate school I can do it I'm not dumb I can do that okay fine got to go to school that was it it's like it checks a box so do it I think it was Jo will that said to me his friend had called him and was going through a difficult time in his life divorce lost his wife lost his job Etc and joer said something words to the effective when you're lost in like a military context whatever you need to start moving yes it doesn't necessarily matter which direction

you move in but you need to start moving in a direction and that was I was thinking about that as you said about this idea of like paralysis by analysis people they might be at rock bottom but they just don't know what to do so they just sat in the same situation certainty in that context is sometimes better for people than the uncertainty of what happens if I you know what if it's the wrong yeah I mean and also you got to figure it's sort of like a self perpetuating problem too where if you let's

say you've hit rock bottom even if you don't know it and you're like oh I want to fix my life I want to do something with my life let's say the kind of generic rock bottom well let's say you get paralysis by analysis and and you're not able to sort of like pick a path and you go nowhere that only reinforces the idea that you're oh you screwed up again MH but you hav't there's just too many choices and you're allowing Too Many Factors to be at play here Joo however he said it is dead

on and there's another way that's talked about in the military which is uh an 80% solution now is oftentimes better than a 100% solution tomorrow and it's all about like speed over certainty in the military it applies a lot of times but that's the way I think people should generally not always but generally look at their lives if they haven't quite built anything yet whether whether they're at rock bottom or just starting out like they're young people and they or whatever age you're at if you just if you feel like you need to to make

a change like you said the the the pain of staying the same is is greater than making a change if you're at that point you kind of know it think about what what matters to you whatever it is like I like to equate it to when like you're in the shower by yourself and you're just having unfiltered true thoughts like ask yourself what do you really care about like honest to God like forget what society says you should care about let's say you really just want to be famous and that's that's that's the actual core

and you don't even know why but that's what you want well guess what listen to that part of you it's not vain it's a thing that matters to you similarly if you if you're like I want to be just Rich great if that's a real motivation for you like at your core in the shower it's just you if that's really what drives you great those are boxes that must be checked for something to be worth doing so it's like have your shower thoughts and be real with yourself like what do you really actually care about

not what society says not what you want your family none of that stuff for me honestly the the reason the sealed thing really paid I wanted to Do It ultimately is I wanted people to say that's John Allen the Navy SEAL because to me it was like I had been the black sheep in my family because of me I had discovered this but it's like oh his sisters have done this oh his dad's done this his mom's done this and then there's John I wanted something that sort of overrode the mediocrity and failure and I

felt like what better thing what more honorable thing and also I wanted to serve that's another check it's a big goal that's difficult that's a check but ultimately it was like I want people to know that I became a Navy SEAL that mattered to me and you know what it's it flies in the face of what Navy SEAL instructors tell you which is you don't want you shouldn't do this because you want to be a Navy SEAL you should do it because you want to serve the country and like that's true and what else you

going to tell your students yeah but if you really want to be real about it you got to find your real motivation and that that box must be checked must be checked yeah so i i p on the must be checked because once you become the Navy SEAL yeah and everyone's saying that's John Allen the Navy SEAL does your motivation disappear or does it become something else and it's really it's I think it's really honest but also quite unorthodox advice to say listen if you if you're in the shower and you're going I just want

to be rich so I can prove these people wrong or want to be famous prove these people wrong um it's an orthodox advice to say to follow that yeah but I have to say I just completely agree yeah I agree because sometimes you have to have a hypothesis fail you or some kind of idea fail you for you to scratch the itch and that's why I was focusing on this idea of ticking the Box yeah it's going to stay there yes it is like I don't know if you can go to therapy or do IAS

or something to get rid of that thing but for me until you pursue it and have it fail you or succeed yep it's going to stay there yeah I mean that ultimately exactly what you said if that box goes unchecked you might in your life eventually convince yourself that you never needed check to check that box but at some point at some point in your life when it becomes too late or you're about to die on your deathbed you will have regret and I I can actually speak to a specific instance in my life which

I had checked a box by this point but I had one that I hadn't checked I was I was in Afghanistan in 2014 and we were in this Alleyway and a grenade came over the wall and it detonated next to a whole bunch of us and I nearly bled to death and I have this moment where I I can't pull the tourniquets off of my kit that are rubber banded to my chest for quick access to stop the bleeding but I was so weak and in like losing my vision we're in the middle of this

gunfight I couldn't get him off and I realized as I'm sitting in this Alleyway in the middle of this like horrible place in Afghanistan like like the town was very kinetic and dangerous and I'm waiting to either be shot by the enemy who we know is on the other side of the wall that could be coming around or I'm going to bleed to death or there RPGs being fired blindly in our Direction it's like I'm about to die 100% I'm actively bleeding out or I'm going to be shot and all that was running through my

head there was a couple thoughts there was one that was kind of funny now which was I was like hm I wonder if my obituary will say Jonathan Allen killed an action or John Allen killed an action so that was going through my head but I also in addition to that I had this really acute sadness that I hadn't started a family yet I didn't have kids I was married we've been married for several years and and my wife and I had s we'd sort of talk about having kids before that deployment but we were

like oh we'll have time and I'm sitting there in this alley bleeding to death or expecting to be shot to death I'm I'm at the end of my life and it was like holy [ __ ] I wish I had a child yes that's horrible for the kid they lost their dad but like that was a box for me I wanted a family what was the first thing I did when I survived this and got home we started a family you know so it's like that's sort of an extreme example but I I do really

believe that a lot of people have boxes that are going to go unchecked but to your point also just try to do it and fail and believe it or not you actually check the box yeah yeah yeah that's true that's actually really really true yeah and yeah it's so interesting that that um because I've never actually heard someone give that kind of advice before what people say is like find your why and they often are quite judgmental about what's motivating you sure so the only like accepted motivation is something like I want to serve my

country or I want change the world but actually most of us are either like driven or dragged as I say which it could be yeah like driven is okay you're very conscious of what's driving you and you're in control but then being dragged is the insecurity it's the shame it's that I you know my siblings are better than me and I want to say [ __ ] you to my parents whatever it might be um very very very interesting it's also even more interesting that you ended up where you are today so you you get

medically discharged from the military after the Afghanistan it was not immediately after but basically between that and some mental issues I was having I was pushed to see a psychologist this is like years after so 2014 that injury happens I survive obviously uh and I ended up getting surgery to sort of like my shoulder was banged up and I I got fixed up enough to deploy again um but I was just not fit to serve physically I was really struggling um to keep up I had some issues with my shoulders and my knees I've strap

all on my leg uh but ultimately I I was recommended to a pych in the military because they're like dude you you you are not like a s person things are not going well for you like close friends of mine just sort of said I don't think this is this is working out and I was very angry I I had like now I can say it it's like I had very stereotypical or whatever you want to call it PTSD like I had not dealt with the near-death experience in Afghanistan and sort of how that went

and so I I ended up going for a medical retirement which was driven in part by the physical injuries but also by like mentally I wasn't there so I get I get medically retired uh in at the end of 2017 and you know it's I never really had a plan you know it's like I I knew I was going to get medically retired which just means like you're going to get out and there's G to be like this amount of money you get paid you it's a retirement it's it's not really enough to to live

on realistically you're going to have to have a job and uh you know I I I basically I got out at the end of 2017 and I went on LinkedIn and I'm like I guess that's where you get job because that's what I think people do and I was like on LinkedIn and I wound up randomly connecting with this guy named Jordan celik who is he was living in New York at the time he's this former investment banker who had just so happened at the time that I was on LinkedIn doing this like kind of

weird job search that his best friend was a transitioning fighter pilot like he was leaving the military going to the private sector was struggling with the transition which is very common in the military making that jump to the civilian world and Jordan who's like this very entrepreneurial guy he was trying to prove to his friend his friend's name was Austin that like you must be alone like you're so successful being a fighter pilot like you're going to find a job and he was like he was doing this exercise where he was reaching out to like

random veterans on LinkedIn and being like hey what are you doing like with your transition to the civilian world to prove to Austin that like you're basically complaining and you can go find a job you're not a but he found like one nobody really got back to him because they didn't know who he was but I got back to him and I'm like actually you know what I just got medically retired I have no idea what I'm going to do I got kids I'm stressed I don't know didn't know this guy uh and so Jordan

quickly went from trying to prove a point to his friend to he was like oh well hey why don't you like come to New York and I'll just like introduce you to some people in my network uh and out of that was born this this charity that Jordan and I actually started called Elite meet that's still around today it's like a networking event it's a series of networking events for transitioning military veterans and private sector you know hiring managers to meet and get jobs so I did that for a little while ironically my job became

running a charity that helped other vets get jobs funny uh but Jordan instilled in me he was a big believer in Gary vaynerchuk's style of social media that sort of like bombard the internet with content and be like Allin on content uh and Jordan he even had a similar sort of he was similar to Gary ve and and I uh I I found it like really fascinating the idea of social media and content creation because when I was in the military I didn't even have or I might have had a YouTube account but I certainly

didn't post on it didn't have social media but I I with Jordan we began using social media content to drive donations for this charity we're running together uh but at some point I wanted to do more like with social media I was doing storytelling but narrative storytelling like written out stories about military stuff to try to get generate donations and I was like yeah I want to I want to do something for myself with social media like build a brand for myself and I I I committed a cardinal sin one that I was very aware

of so this is self-awareness but doing it anyways um in the the SEAL Teams and really I think in Special Operations generally despite what you see in terms of books written and like movies made about seals and you can Google seals and there's like 78 examples of seals that are publicly talk publicly talking about being Navy Seals there is like this code of conduct amongst the active duty community that you don't talk about being a seal that's not what you can say you are a seal no one's telling you you literally have to lie about

it but being a seal is not something that's yours being a seal is you were allowed to enter a community of people that were like fighting for a common goal together struggling bleeding dying together like the the the strength of the brand of seal the seal brand is built literally on people dying and so you can't then leave the military and say hey look at me I was a Navy SEAL because that's for personal gain you can't do that it's sort of a gray area I get it yeah I began posting about being I was

the quintessential look at this guy Mr Navy SEAL uh at first it wasn't that way it wasn't like one day I was like guess what guys I'm a Navy SEAL but it it began as like a oh I'm going to just like have my own accounts and sort of tell stories about my experience as a seal to push people towards Elite meet but then quickly as these began to succeed not really but kind of they got like a thousand likes here or there I was like wow that's that's pretty cool and I like began leaning

a little more and more until finally I was like fullsend like the guy that you're not supposed to be this is like in 2018 2019 and dude I got disowned by the Navy SEAL Community I mean like hard give me specifics when you say disign uh I could pull up DMS uh from Instagram no I so at first did not catch a whole lot of public at first I think I was doing it and people sort of were like well he's doing this charity Elite meet that's helping seals it's helping vets but gradually as I

sort of drifted farther and farther away from that into just like John the Navy SEAL mind you I'm not giving up anything sensitive it isn't like I'm talking about stuff that's like problematic it's really just doing some of this you know pumping my chest I began receiving just some of the most painful messages I've ever gotten in my life it's it's it's different than getting hate you know as Mr Ballin on the internet I certainly get hate from time to time but it's different because they don't know me it's like they see somebody on the

internet doing something they don't agree with or like and so they they they speak their opinion I'm sure you're familiar but it's not personal it might feel personal at first but you get used to it this was actual seals who I knew who wanted me to know exactly who was sending this message like writing me messages to be like hey I used to think of you this way and now I think of you this way with like detailed explanations of and talking about how at the team like we all talk about how much you [

__ ] suck basically and like I would go I lived in Virginia beach at the time which is where uh the team Seal Team Seal Team 2 that's where I was at it's it's a big town but it's where like a huge concentration of seals were and during this time I would like go out to like the grocery store and I would see people that I know these are not I think that guy could be a seal it's like oh no I served with him I know exactly who that is and they like mean mug

me and my family at the grocery store or the gym because remember this is not like a normal group of people this is like a group of highly trained killers of like operators people that like go to war they're not afraid of conflict and I have done something that in many ways has like tarnished their brand not their brand not have they look at tarnish the Brotherhood it it's like I'm being selfish and I was revive they hated me I got I got regularly two to three messages email Instagram wherever I I I get I

get phone calls voice messages of people leaving me just the most deep cutting personal like I this is how I know you and this is what's being said about you and this is how I feel about you it was horrible but luckily uh I had already had the experience in my life CS gas thing the coming home from college thing of fairly quickly realizing that no matter how I justify this no matter how I justify why I drifted into this Arena ultimately I knew what was going I knew the line and I knew when I

crossed the line of being no matter what the public thinks about sealed content that you see on the on the internet I knew amongst the huge majority of people that will never be public about their service the active duty guys and and the retired guys I had crossed a line for them and I was not dumb I I I would have been just as upset if I was them still active looking at a guy like me but instead of like getting mad at anybody or looking for Retribution or trying to justify it uh I deleted

it all at some point I remember there was a night I'm like sitting on my couch and I got a message from somebody that I would have said was one of my very close friends and it just said you suck that's all it said but it sounds stupid but this is somebody who's on Team Six this is somebody who is I specifically trained with and was like very close with like his wife and my wife were close and like I know what the context of this message is it's way more than you suck it's we're

not the same anymore like you're different and I look down on you and I was like I can't do this there's there is no amount of success that I could possibly achieve doing the Navy SEAL content stuff that would be worth what I'm going through right now and so instead of being like I'm going to just act like they didn't happen I just removed all the content save for a couple of very small specific things and I hadn't lost the itch for making content but it was like I can't do anything with regards to being

a seal because that's not worth it to me and I don't want to do it I felt wrong and after trying things that never worked like sketch comedy and like following trends at one point I was my lowest my lowest moment my my worst one was I uh there was a trend on Tik Tok briefly where people would tell like sort of weirdly traumatic stories not traumatic but like intense stories but with autotune they'd use the feature in Tik Tok that was autotune and they'd like sort of sing it as autotune but it would be

like about the time they got like mugged and so like it's the the contrast is so extreme it's sort of interesting I did something like that and I made it and I was like I cannot post this this is like the worst thing I've ever made uh but nothing worked and I I remember thinking like okay you know I I I don't have a clue what I could do that would be interesting um and actually I remember I had these two documents in my computer this is again post deleting everything I'm like trying to make

it on social media with something different I had this one document that was like ideas for Content that were not seal related that were like totally divorced from that the sketch comedy the autot tune whatever it was and I I literally had exhausted all of them but I had this other document that for I didn't even know why I had separated this topic but it was all I wrote on it was deat laav P so personally I am interested in the strange dark and mysterious the tagline that's become the Mr Ballin thing basically Unsolved Mysteries

but not like don't think True Crime necessarily think like World level Mysteries like what's out there is there life out there like why is this portion of Antarctica blacked out out on Google Earth like the Deep like scintillating stuff that no one really has an answer to I I've always been drawn to that stuff and I uh there's a really famous mystery called the diat laav pass and it's about these hikers in the 50s these nine really experienced hikers uh who are going for their what's called their level three mountaineering test which sounds sort of

like run-of-the-mill but in fact in in Soviet Russia in the 1950s this was like Master Mountaineer nobody had level three this is like the top if you did this you're like the best climbers in the country if not potentially the world this is a big deal and the way you pass your level three is you and the people taking it with you there was nine of them you have to map out this route through this really rugged part of whatever Mountain you're going to use they use the EUR all mountains so big snow swept like

huge icy mountains and you map out this course that like checks the boxes of difficulty and you you're effectively timed you have to start on a particular day in time and they have people set up along the way the scheduled checkpoints if you will and so they brought cameras with them this group this is again 1952 I think it was and so this these young nine hikers who were like so excited to do this test no one stressed they're so pumped there's a couple of couples in there they set off on this this journey and

I think they reached the first checkpoint I forget what it is but they didn't make it to whatever second checkpoint or whatever it was and there was a protocol for the people who were sort of sponsoring this TCH that were part of the checkpoints that knew this they knew what was going on where if they missed a checkpoint there's like this big search that goes out to make sure they're okay even though the even though there's some expectation that they might not make a checkpoint by like a day because it's a difficult test but the

protocol is like really extreme as soon as they go missing it's like the Army gets involved and they go and follow the route to find the hikers so they missed the checkpoint this protocol is enacted and not only are there pictures that we will get from the hikers but there was cameras that came with the search crew they they follow the trail that they're supposed to be on this is again there's no trees it's just like the tundra it's like ice and snow and mountains and they come across this mountain off in the distance and

they see on the Windswept Side of the Mountain basically halfway up are these tents that are just these like canvas tents you barely see them but they're they're situated right in the middle of the of the slope which is like strategically one of the worst places you can place these tents so immediately they're thinking one it has to be the hikers because who else is out here right now but two why in the world with these incredibly talented hikers or Mountaineers why would they ever pitch their tent there this is the most hazardous part the

wind can whip you off you either go to the top and over or you stay to the bottom let's say you beun hiking up that mountain you get halfway and you're like I can't make it you better go back down and make T and make your Camp down there so they see this these tents they're in the wrong spot they go up to the tents and the hikers aren't there they're not in there there's pictures of this too the tents inside had stacks of clothing neatly folded and and placed in the corners like as if

they hadn't they left their clothes behind and the and the tents themselves were cut open like with a knife but somehow they deduced that they had been cut open but from the inside so presumably one or multiple of the Mountaineers chose to cut open these tents in like negative 50 degree weather and then there were all these prints in the snow that led down the mountain and some of the prins were bare feet some had one shoe and one Barefoot and it's all nine of the hikers they they spotted these Prince and they follow the

prince down the hill or the mountain it's a big space and they find this little crops of trees there's only a few few areas in the Euro mountains in this part of the Euro mountains that have trees and there's this little group of trees and when they get to the trees they find three of the hikers and they're all deceased and there's one who's basically almost naked kind of wrapped up on the ground there's pictures of this uh there's one who I believe was draped over one of the branches up in one of the trees

and then another one that was also on the ground as well and there's these deep scratch marks in the tree like gouges on the tree as if some animal had been scratching at this tree and all three of these hikers are deceased and they there's it looks like exposure but they're not really wearing the right clothing or they're missing pieces of clothing but they're all deceased there's more footprints that lead away from those three about a mile kind of back in the direction the search party had come from and there's this big snow drift that

created sort of like a snow cave underneath it and the footprints lead into the snow cave cave where the other six hikers were and they're all deceased as well except in there the hikers had seemingly exchanged clothing and they know this because the women were wearing men's clothing and vice versa some of their clothes had Trace levels of radiation and some of them had parts of their face removed it looked like lips nose ears it almost looked like like surgical Precision removal they're all deceased and uh one of the injuries there was a person in

there who their chest had basically been caved in and it was deduced that the Imp it would have taken there was no there's no lacerations just their chest was caped in the impact would have been equivalent to like a speeding car smashing into at full speed but there's no sign of anything that could have done this damage and they're all deceased and so the Soviet government they launched an investigation and during this investigation they discover that there was a huge military exercise a Russian military exercise taking place in the eural mountains who had no idea

about these hikers they have no clue that the level mountaineering test is going on that's not even on their radar and they're you know 15 20 miles away and one of their senior commanders on the same night that it's believed the hikers all died and whatever happened to them happened he began noticing all these strange lights in the sky over the Ural Mountains going up and down and moving all around to the point where he actually thought it was another country a foreign country are they invading us and he literally thought it was like an

invasion of Russia and he sent out messages to say hey what's happening over there having no idea that he was pointing to the one spot where these hikers were so during this investigation they discover that families are clamoring for information about their lost loved ones no nobody has any idea what what's going on and suddenly the Soviet government says up we're going to shut this investigation down all we know is that the nine hikers who died died from an unknown unnatural Force sealed and to date even though there was actually a recent investig a reinvestigation

done in 2020 uh it's remained like one of the great Unsolved Mysteries in part because it's got this like oh the the Russian government sealed it and there's more information what do they mean unknown uh unnatural Force but there's pictures of the tent of the bodies of all this stuff and so I uh I always thought that was a fascinating story and I love stories like that and I I was at this water park in Pennsylvania with my family indoor water park and at this point I've exhausted the one list you know nothing's worked on

social media this new thing Tik Tok had sort of begun to happen uh I didn't really even know what it was but I was like maybe I'll try posting on there you know because it's a it's a new platform maybe that'll work and I was like but I bet I I want to try something else you know because these haven't these ideas haven't worked and so like in my hotel room I tell my wife and three kids like go down the water park I'll meet you down there in a minute and I just pull out

the phone and I do a 60-second rendition of that and I was like hey you know at the end of this you're going to Google you're going to Google two words and I tell this brief story about this this crazy mystery and I'm like that's called the deat laav pass mystery that's the name of the P they were in when they were found and I post this video to my account that has no followers it's like the Mr Ballin account there's a story behind that but it's it's a nothing account post it and really no

expectation that this is going to amount to anything I leave my phone in the room because I'm going down to the water park I can't waterproof my phone I'll be with my kids and when I came back up a few hours later and I picked up my phone I couldn't even get it to turn on like it was like I was like oh is it all is it power dead and I finally get it on and it's just like like notifications like mad from this video there's over 5 million views on this video mind you

everything I've ever posted collectively has maybe been like a 100,000 views so this is like massive virality but it was utterly divorced from seal stuff this is like pure I think this is fascinating and I love telling stories and that wasn't like oh boy here's a business opportunity it was more like oh my God this is so cool I'm going to tell more stories like that cuz this is what I like and I just began making story after story that sort of fell in line with that and the and it happened to fall at literally

the start of the pandemic so it's like suddenly everybody is not only on their phones but they're on Tik Tok and everybody on Tik Tok is like mostly kids dancing and also me telling stories with a flannel and backwards hat and so the account just blew up like mad I transitioned to YouTube and I I've just been telling stories ever since so first and foremost I have to ask what do you think happened to those hikers man I don't know I don't know so the they reopened the investigation like I said in 2020 uh it

I I don't claim this to be true but I think it might have been in part because of the viral the virality of that that video suddenly there's this newfound interest of people Googling that the outlaw pass um and they concluded that there was an ice slab that broke off and killed them but it's like how does that account for like the clothes being exchanged the the potential radioactive nature of their clothes like what the the the military guys Sol with the lights there's too many things that don't get explained um it is true that

like when you become hypothermic when you when you become truly hypothermic and you're nearing like the end basically you're about to die from exposure uh it's you you become warm to the point where you're hot you actually take your clothes off yeah that's a well documented thing so you could say okay so they're they're they they've pitched a terrible place on the on the mountain they're they're being exposed to the elements they're basically freezing maybe they did maybe as skilled as they were they weren't really prepared for the weather and so they became hypothermic and

let's say maybe an avalanche or an ice slab did come down and maybe they got hit by the ice slab and now they're hypothermic they're taking their clothes off but it's like okay what are all the marks in the tree you know why are why are their clothes radioactive what did the government mean when they said an unknown unnatural Forest back in the 1950s what were the lights seen by the the military guy there's too many unanswered questions so I uh admittedly am a huge skeptic and if anything doing uh creating this content has only

made me more skeptical because there's so much stuff that gets put out that's not true and it's just like totally made up but this remains one of those stories that just sort of makes you wonder like is it possible there's stuff out there that we don't necessarily understand like Supernatural forces or you know extraterrestrials like I'd say this is a a story that certainly opens the possibility but I also would be perfectly fine to hear that actually turns out here's all the things that happened that makes that completely reasonable maybe there was a a leak

of some kind that like leaked out radiation or who knows what so I'm open to it but I think it's it's one of the few cases that that seems like could make a case for paranormal and my next question is as you reflect on the Journey of your life yeah from from the basement to the seals to then producing the seals content getting disowned from your seals Brotherhood because of that then stumbling across this Tik Tok thing yeah then YouTube and everything else that's happened when you look back and go like how can I give

anybody advice on how to stumble into their thing based on the actions the intentional actions that I took that brought me here so one of the things that my wife and I often find ourselves saying uh is like wow like we the timing on things is just amazing we are so lucky with timing and I'll give you a couple examples so when I was getting medically retired from the military there was a time where I actually was going to be pushed out like actually cut from the military and it was going to be like a

year earlier than when I actually did and so it was like hey you're going to get medically retired and it's happening tomorrow and I didn't have a I didn't have a job lined up I didn't have anything lined up and that's actually when I began reaching out and I met Jordan and it was like really quickly we we came up with this Elite meet thing but then after the elite meet thing I actually had some legs and we're getting donations in we're putting these these cool events on and I have like this feeble little salary

coming in from it plus my retirement I'm like okay I can keep I can keep things afloat for a little while until I figure out the next thing right as that happened so out of necessity i' I've I've found a way to to make an income within like a month of needing to have an income the Navy says actually we're going to extend your contract for an extra I think it was eight months or something and so suddenly I had the uh the opportunity with Jordan and Elite meet but also got eight more months or

10 months six I forget what it was it was it was less than a year but it was a lot more time in the Navy but I really didn't have to do much in the Navy I I was already on the medical discharge way I B I had to go to work and like either like a couple hours a week it was not hard but it meant I got paid through the Navy and so it allowed me really to not worry about pulling money from Elite meat and pulling a salary I can just grow Elite

meat with Jordan and get paid by the Navy it's like the Navy is incubating Elite meat but Elite meat wouldn't have existed if I didn't have that oh my God I'm getting out in a month I have to do something about it and so it feels like oh the timing so perfect like I started Elite meet with Jordan and then I was granted this extra time with the Navy it fostered the this company it incubated this company but no I've sort of always looked at the looked at my life as being like man there just

such amazing timing on things like I just feel like we're so blessed with the timing like when like the the Tik Tok thing like I just so happen to to like be making this video when suddenly everybody's on Tik Tok at the beginning of the pandemic yeah that's insane timing for sure and I'm not denying that that's a timing thing but also I'm somebody that is perfectly willing to take a chance and do something like I don't I don't get stuck on is is this a good idea or not it's like I'm just going to

try this thing and it's the people that are sort of willing to quickly check a box and do this thing that will be in a position to where timing can benefit you if you're constantly like ah I'm thinking about it I'm thinking things are going to pass you by and so I I look I forget what the question was but essentially the the advice I would give is like really it's sort of what Joo said it's this idea of like you just got to start moving because it's amazing what doors begin to open up for

you if if you're already on the move if you're stationary they don't open it's interesting because as you were talking about timing I was thinking that's not what I think the answer is I was thinking that timing is one of those things you you see in hindsight and go gosh wasn't that perfect timing but for it to be perfect timing you need to be the kind of guy who's willing to send their kids down to the pool with your wife and make a Tik Tok video on a platform you know very little about yeah doing

something you've never done before right and it's actually in that moment that I think your that's your like moment of Brilliance that's when your life pivots because genuinely 99.9% of people would not be making a video on a platform they don't know much about on a subject that they've never made it a video about before and your story is like riddled with those moments where like even responding to the guy on LinkedIn you said most people didn't reply that's right but I responded and then you went and met him in New York or something and

that c so in in hindsight yes it looks like timing but actually it's that you were in moments where you were lost you got moving you did something you had a bias towards action yeah and failure is feedback feedback is knowledge knowledge is power so you it was it's interesting because when you're talking about like your bias of just like do something aim at something what what it appears is happening there is even if the thing fails like some of the things you tried failed at least you're getting feedback true and then the feedbacks informing

what you do next like you said I did the um the seals thing on LinkedIn you learned some stuff about social media there okay it didn't work out how you wish but you took that into the next test yeah and um and that's really I think when looked at your story the defining thing is these just a willingness to in fact i' be honest a willingness to embarrass yourself and be bad at something you know it's funny you say that because uh I I literally have like sort of a mantra that I've developed that I

can't claim is something I came up with but I definitely find myself living by it now um and that is uh it's do things that scare you and I'll quantify that or qualify that so actually Will Smith the actor has this great thing he does he goes on Oprah I think it was Oprah or some talk show and he talks about his experience skydiving and uh you know it's it's it's this unbelievable like monologue this impromptu monologue he gives but he basically is like you know my my family was like yeah or my buddies like

we're gonna go skydiving tomorrow and it was like oh yeah that'll be so crazy we'll go skydiving tomorrow but he's like we're not gonna really do that and then it's like the next morning we get up and he's like yeah let's go get breakfast guys like no no we're going to go skydiving like let's go let's go skydiving and he's like wait really doing that and they're like yeah and he's like oh my God I I don't want to go skydiving I thought we were just like saying it last night and he winds up you

know going with his buddies to the actual you know Airfield and they're like signing the paperwork and he's like guys are we really doing this I I don't want to do this come on it's not so bad and so before long he's like in the plane up in the air attached to the instructor and he's like they open the door up and they're like all right it's your turn and he's like I'm sitting on the edge and I'm having like this full-blown crisis like I don't want to jump I'm terrified of jumping and the instructor

is like all right will we're going to go on three one jumps really and he was like the second I left the plane fear was gone yeah and it was just this exhilarating experience of soaring through the air of skydiving and he was like when I landed it he's like I suddenly understood that there's always been this this aspect in my life that I've sort of seen in other ways in my life but it's the best things in life this is Will Smith not me best things in life are on the are on the other

side of fear and so what I've taken that as you know like uh becoming a Navy SEAL for example when I decided to do it like there's a huge amount of fear and and not so much fear of failure it's like just it's fear of like not stacking up like when I got there like you're I was so intimidated by the people around me but I knew if I could just like not let the fear overwhelm me that the reward on the back end would be so high you know or or even take you know

I I just did a live we did a live tour with 15 shows I actually am terrified of public speaking I've had instances in my life where I have Frozen up publicly giving a speech and literally had to put the microphone down and leave I've had that experience and I'm volunteering to do a tour with thousands of people but it's the way I look at it is like the things that you don't want to do you'll be indifferent to the things that you do want to do you'll typically have a if it's a if it's

a big enough thing the best things in life so to speak you will have element of a fear response to it now of if you're scared to go down the basement because you hear an intruder breaking in listen to yourself don't go down in the basement when it comes to like goal setting kind of going back to that that idea of shower thoughts right everybody has some that they just really want to do and it's not even necessarily motivated by one particular thing maybe it's some action they want to take maybe it's talking to a

friend that they've blown off for 10 years or or it's public speaking or whatever it is but they know even if they don't admit to it deep down they know fear is the thing keeping them from doing it it's fear of embarrassment it's fear of failure it's a fear of all the things that make us human it's the very select number of people in this life that are still able to say I'm going to still do that thing that scares the [ __ ] out of me that have the best and most fulfilling lives not

always but they often do and like that's why we look at like Will Smith for example that dude very likely just because I'm I'm referencing him he's probably had to do things that were so uncomfortable in his life to be an actor at his level is like hey perform in front of everybody right now and don't screw it up you know it's like pressure and performance it's like that dude has faced fears his whole life yeah he's using skydiving as an example but his life is very likely a product of a guy who faces fears

but it's the fear knowing that if I do this there's something big on the other side and so I preach to my children and I try to live this idea of do things that scare you and literally the live tour that we just did was was it I I was having like an existential crisis before we began but the second I took the stage it was like oh this is great so it goes back to what you were saying about when will jumped out of the plane yeah the all the fear was there before he

jumped oh yes and just like you walking up out on that stage the fear you're tormented before Oh yes I always find before significantly harder in every way oh yeah before before everything that I've done in my life is the worst part once you get into it it's you're confronting reality which isn't always as bad but yes before is horrible and also when you're talking I was thinking you know it's really either way you're making a decision in those moments like when you thinking about your life tour the decision is do I accept the unchecked

box or do I accept this mental torment that I'm going to inflict upon myself that's very true and I think yeah when they talk to people on their Death Beds and stuff the worst thing is the unchecked Box not the it's got to be not that I walked out and put the mic down and walked off yeah like I don't look I look back at the fact that I and I was in San Francisco at a dinner where I literally froze and put the mic down and walked off I looked at that as a catalyst

for why I was so scared to do public speaking this time and it ultimately pushed me to do it I don't regret San Francisco I'm glad it happened but only because I faced it later on I would be so embarrassed I would I would Harbor like my pain forever if I never try it again but yeah it's like the you don't regret the failure you regret not trying how do people misunderstand you cuz they like you they see you on a screen and they consume a certain type of content you make they probably don't know

the full context of your life but how do you think people have misunderstood you oh good question um I would say and this is not even to try to Curry you know favor with my you know former seal Brethren but I think that even when I was posting and this is really just specifically to the people that really disown me who still very likely do you you know my intention when I was posting the the seal stuff before Mr ball and thing happened it was never like I'm so great it was more like I want

to do something with my life and this feels like an opportunity and I know it's sort of like questionable but when you're no longer in that insulated team room when you're in the Wolfpack so to speak it's easy to view the rest of your life as being oh it'll I become a seal I can do anything I want but like when you're cast out or when you leave and you're by yourself and you got to like figure out your new life it's it's really difficult to imagine how you're going to do that without leveraging you

know the biggest thing you've ever done and so I think that the one definite specific thing is I never made that content because I literally believed I'm the special guy and like everybody better look at me as like Mr Navy SEAL I was very aware of the fact that I was a junior seal relative to the other people that had served and like my experience was minimal compared to others um so I think that some people think that I actually somehow believe that I'm like I'm a superhero and I didn't then and I don't know

uh I'd say now sort of the Mr ball ins side of things there's like a practical thing which is the as the sort of Mr Ballin thing has grown to where it is now to where it's like a it's a pretty recognizable thing in in the genre of the strange dark and mysterious um it's been really really challenging for me personally to balance my my life with my wife and my three kids kids who I adore and sort of like you know responsibilities with content I mean we have a recording schedule we have things that

I sort of have pledged to do and as you know with content creation there's not really an end you just sort of keep doing it I think that by no means am I saying like oh this job is so hard people better sympathize with me hardly like I understand the privilege but at the same time like I started making content and it was like an outpouring of content constantly I was making five videos a week sometimes times that are like 25 minutes each by myself like shooting it editing it everything it was like it would

take me about 26 hours or so per video over seven days so it's like yeah I really wasn't sleeping I became like a raging alcoholic I became like horribly overweight because it was like everything got pushed aside to make videos and then as I realized that like doing content at that ferish rate was really taking a toll on my physical health my mental health um and definitely my relationship with my wife and kids I began to sort of make an exchange it was like I I'm going to do less content for more time with my

family and loads of people got that it isn't like the masses were like dude you're you're a jerk but I think what's happened now and it's sort of a product of success is we've reached a point not just me but like I we have a team that's pretty sizable we have an amazing studio we have publishing division we have this we have that like we've reached a point where I think people view me as like this corporate guy guy out to get money when in reality like you were talking before the show like you're like

it's weird people say you're so successful when I don't even know what I'm doing like I'm still very much the guy that randomly made a video that went viral on Tik Tok and so one of the harder things for me has been as the audience grows which I'm happy for it's like you really have to understand that there there are people that don't like me anymore like have taken an issue with me and it's always this idea that like I'm somehow like this money grubbing like corporate guy that is only in it to make money

when in reality like as you probably seen with this interview dude my default is I love telling stories I love this genre I always have and like I also I I kind of like being My Own Boss to a degree so it's like it checks a lot of boxes for me do you ever worry that you've got your priorities wrong well when I say that I really mean um because when you're a create content creator like we both are yeah um like you say it's you're constant it's constant it's constant it's constant and there's there's

no light at the end of the tunnel in terms of there's not like you get off this train at some point if you get off you fail effec that is how it works so how do you think because if I said to you you're going to be doing this forever like you're going to be doing what you do now for the next 30 Years you know I think that I've actually probably reached a point in my life as a content creator where maybe I haven't come to it exactly the way you've just laid it out

but it's I'm definitely not currently in this for money if anything I'm in it for I get a lot of enjoyment out of literally telling stories I mentioned to you pre-show that doing the live tour was so much fun because I got to actually interact with these people that show up as numbers on my YouTube videos but they're real people and it's like it was so much fun like fulfilling for me I would have I literally told Nick our my CEO and the man and my manager before the tour started like I would have I

would have paid to do the tour and now especially I would have paid money to have that experience to put those shows on but yeah like looking ahead it's like I've sort of reached a point which is like I was never really in this for for fame or money or I definitely was in it for like the idea of being successful no doubt I want to be successful and things come with that that are in in the money and fame in the app but like I ultimately just I'm a guy that just like tries new

stuff I've done lots of new things I sort of re invented myself several times over but I do really well when I just sort of have a new goal and I I thrive in that environment and like for me like when the Mr Ballin thing started it was not how much money can we make or how successful or how big of a business can we make it was like can I make another video that people like can I keep doing that and that became the goal can I repeat interest in the videos could you see

yourself ever stopping yes and no for sure because I think that I'm also capable of saying and now I'm I'm good I'm going to go do this completely new thing with my family and ride off into the sunset you think you're capable of that saying that I do actually how many subscribers have you got total it's like I mean your main Channel's got almost what 10 million it's about 10 I think that if you if I think we've done the math and we looked at all areas all platforms including podcast it's probably somewhere around 20

to 25 million like 20 25 million subscribers you you would be okay with just walking away and saying could you see that reality in the future yeah is there anything that it would take for you to get there is it like would you need yeah is there anything any Catalyst you think you know actually it's funny to bring this up because I I've sort of mentioned the the live tour a couple times uh if if I had to be honest about my deeply internalized unchecked box from the time I became an adult well from the

time I like joined the military it was I always just had this interest in giving a big public talk for no other reason than to Simply conquer that moment uh my dad is an incredible speaker uh he's done some pretty big talks and I've I've seen him speak and he's so good and I uh I've always known that I was I have a I'm a good speaker I can tell stories this is something well before Mr Ballin um but I I I viewed it as something that was so terrifying that I would I would never

actually do it I was the guy that had that thought and was like I'll live with an unchecked box and I I would tell myself it's because I don't don't really have the content to deliver a talk I I have the ability but no content and that was my excuse but then the Mr Ballin things H the Mr Ballin thing sort of takes off and suddenly it's like oh you have the audience you have the content you have all this stuff it is now a decision are you going to do it or not and I

over the last couple years have like really mentally tortured myself to to work myself up to be like I'm not only going to do the live stuff but I'm going to do a whole tour like it's and I told you before before the show that I wanted limited production value a part of that was because I wanted it to be me with a spotlight on me with a microphone to make it as as intense as it could possibly be because I felt like if I didn't start there i' I'd be worried I didn't fulfill the

thing I've always wanted to do which is like be the guy with the mic and and Captivate people and so I did that I feel like I I genuinely accomplished this thing that I really didn't think I would ever actually do because fear was was too much I wasn't able to get to get past it but as a result coming back from that tour and this is going to sound so like egotistical but it's like we come back from tour and we have this the graphic novel we released New York Times bestselling graphic novel like

it's beautiful I'm so proud of that book you know the tour was like statistically financially whatever you want to call it huge success you know the the YouTube channel the podcast everything's going great but I suddenly had no more genuinely deep-seated unchecked boxes I don't the only thing I have is like a real desire to to be a good dad but it hasn't there's not a specific way to quantify that like but by doing the live thing which was so in the back of my mind now that it's been checked I could do 50 more

Live tours and it would never be the same as the first one like I I could right now they said hey there's 7,000 people out there go tell a story impromptu I could do that right now it wouldn't be it' be stressful as hell but I'd do it I don't have and this this is again not meant to be egotistical I don't have a goal anymore I've now reached a point where in the only other thing that I wanted to do was pitch for the Boston Red Sox and I think that ship is sailed that'd

be the one thing I'm not to be able to do but I don't really have like the the big audacious goal I'm sure I'll find one I'm looking for one um but I've sort of reached a point where like I adore the storytelling aspect of Storytelling I just do I'm doing it right now um but I also adore my family and my kids and I and I want to have a full life there and and by the way I definitely have a good balance right now but to your point could I do this for 30

more years the answer is no I could do this for a time and I'll put all of my energy into it and when when when people hear my fans when I say like I genuinely care about what you think I'm in the comments I read rdit I read painful things unre it I read all this stuff it's because I genuinely care because this was never about building a business that's a product of the thing that I love to do it's a product of telling stories and and loving to do that but yeah I don't have

I don't have the Deep unchecked box I hope to find one but right now it's like I feel like I'm just sort of doing stuff and I need to find the thing and I don't have it I'm I'm so fortunate so blessed and I love my life I love that but I don't have I've done the the Box checking and I and I don't know what's next everybody needs a an uncheck box don't I I feel like you do it keeps you moving keeps you like thinking about it's like purpose and meaning isn't it it's

like a there was that that horrible disaster with the The Little Submarine that imploded horrible thing and I was reading about it and like the people that that go on these deep sea excursions are typically like billionaires it's people that literally have every resource known toand you can do basically anything you want within reason and it's like they can't figure out what to do now because everything like to us if it's like hey do do you want to go buy a hundred million doll yacht today like we can't do that like I can't I can't

go buy aund maybe you can't I I can't buy $100 million but it's like imagine being we it's very difficult to do this I'm sure billionaires could tell us if you could buy anything it's like suddenly everything loses its value at least the things you can buy it's only valuable to us because we can't have it you know it's like I can get this nice of a car but I know I can't get a McLaren yeah but that's what makes this one special because I can't afford this one but it's like the billionaires it's like

oh well all I can do is like adrenaline now because it's money doesn't put a so it's it's I've sort of reached a point not b millionaire status even close but it's like it's hard to to figure out what I even want to do besides knowing Wife and Kids is like a really big thing for me uh it stems literally from nearly dying in Afghanistan like really cherishing the fact that I have a family um but it's like I also cherish what I have here with ball and Studios I just I'm waiting for the next

big sort of unchecked box to to appear what's your journey like been with your own mental health because you talked about PTSD um you talked about becoming a bit of an alcoholic as well at one point what's that Journey been like what's what's that sort of overlaid across your story yeah I uh I've really struggled with my mental health uh in particular kind of like in the from military service was a big part of it I when I was medically retired so 2014 I get hurt in Afghanistan I really didn't I thought I dealt with

it because you have to go see a therapist and stuff post deployments you go you go speak to somebody but I sort of was just sort of playing the game to get through it cuz I just wanted to deploy again and be a part of the team again um it wasn't until later on that I actually so I I deployed a second time and I went to to South America um and I remember not giving much thought to the deployment before I got there I remember thinking like compared to going to Afghanistan we're going to

South America to like sit in a in like a nice house literally in a beautiful part of South America and like train Peruvian military forces like it's not a combat deployment this is like you're deploying and you're living there but you're just sort of like a teacher that's the gist and and that's that's an amazing thing to do but it's definitely not combat but as a result I really didn't like mentally prepare myself for what it would be like to be in Peru and if you don't know this like Peru is a totally Spanish-speaking country

it's very at least where we were there was very little English like very very little and so I remember I I I had to go late to Peru so my team had gone the the group of us that was deploying there they went early to Peru and I went like a week later and it meant that I had to fly into the airport in Peru by myself and I had to like navigate the airport and and and I I speak a little Spanish like barely conversational and I didn't take it seriously at all they gave

us Spanish coures I blew it off and I remember I got to Peru and it was like oh my God like as soon as I landed and I look around and no one speaks English I'm trying to figure out where to go everything's in Spanish I can't find my ride my ride by the way is a local who speaks Spanish doesn't know what I look like and it was and and my bag got stuck and they were trying to figure out what was in my bag but I don't speak their it was so stressful and

then I finally get in the vehicle to get brought to our our house we were at but to get there it required driving through like a true like slum like a very very unsafe place and I remember thinking like I am in a totally foreign country I'm so far from my family and I'm going to be here for 6 months which is not long by you know deployment standards that's that's a long time to be away and it was like I didn't put any thought into this I can't believe I'm going to be here it

like I had suddenly I felt like I was in Afghanistan again a little bit I struggled so so bad on that deployment with just being sane like I was so miserable there there was like to the point where I was borderline having delusions I was so depressed I can't even describe it I had this recurring dream where I'd be lying on my bed and and it's also it's always moist in Peru like it's everything's wet like no matter what like your your sheets are wet your clothes are wet it's like a very humid environment and

I'm like laying in my bed I don't have a fan it's like humid in this crappy little room and outside it you just hear the chaos of like the Peruvian streets and I would like fall asleep and I'd have this dream that I was in Russia standing on the corner of this like Embassy or some some federal building and somebody would come out of a car and like grab me and and like hijack me and like take me hostage but it was like over and over again I had this dream to the point where I

began to believe I was losing my mind that like how can I have the same dream i' like wake up in a in a in a in a panic I missed my wife so terribly she was pregnant with our first child it was awful it was like the worst time of my life and it's hard to even even now to put it into words it was just like I had bordering on like a mental collapse and it was in part because I just didn't appreciate the fact that like you're going to another part of the

world where everything is different and I also sort of began to confront I guess my demons from the the playment to Afghanistan there were just some things that I that we did that I did that were not necessarily wrong or like illegal at all but just like it's war and war is like this horrible thing and seeing it up close man it's it's just it's rough you know and at the time you're you're so conditioned to not only see war and be okay with it but to practically Revel in it because how else do you

get young men to keep going to war and keep fighting and dying you need men and women but it was like I yeah it was it was like I had like a breakdown like a mental sort of questioning why am I in the military you know questioning who I was and so I ended up getting medically retired and it was not really from from Peru at all it was more like I was so unhappy I came back from Peru and I just detested the fact that I was in the military I I didn't feel like

it was the place for me I also was physically injured I was dealing with the injuries and I ended up getting medically retired but it was my choice if I wanted to continue to see a therapist after I got out and at first I didn't at first when I got out at when I got medically retired I just was like whatever I'm done I'm on my own but I was so angry all the time like just everything made me mad I was so like on edge not even like jumpy but just I was just like

so high strung and it got to the point where like nobody wanted to be around me like my kids didn't want to be around me my wife didn't want to be around me and ultimately they were like I think you need to see somebody and I was like you know what I think I do too like I feel like I'm a mess and it was through therapy that I this is like 2018 or so that I realized I had some very deep-seated issues with myself with my service with just stuff I saw and did and

it was only when I began to sort of openly talk about those things that I actually began to sort of forgive myself and begin to feel content like con uh what's the word content again you know it's not about like therapy is not meant to make you forget stuff it's to it's to give you perspective that you didn't have and I just I think I had fallen into a cycle of like just detesting who I was and why I think that it was like ultimately if I would to boil it down to its simplest part

it's like I wanted to be a Navy Seal in part because I just wanted to go through the training I wanted to serve in the military but I didn't really think that hard about that it was mostly like I want to serve because it's an honorable thing and I know people that have done it and and that's something that means something to me but it was really the draw to be a seal that was the challenge that I saw that's the thing it's going to take years to do it it's like this really hard thing

it was like the idea of even contemplating what life would be like as a seal felt like even cart before the horse it's like who do you think you are thinking about what it's going to be like to be a seal like if you ever get there you'll figure it out and this is actually a I think it's a relatively common phenomenon that the the people that become seals it's almost surprising like you become a seal and you're like wait a minute like now I'm going to be a Navy SEAL which sounds goofy but it's

years to get to that point and all the way up until the end to to a degree you can not make it you can like fail out and so you finally become a seal and you realize like the reality of the job and I and I say this not because I have deep exposure to this but because it's just true which is in this job people die and you kill people like that's kind of the gist of the job there's way more to it than that but it's it's like a that's the job guys like

why do why do you think they make video games and movies about it and I think that there's a a mental conditioning to being able to do that job that comes from training and frankly it's it's a remarkable thing that they're able to create this this system that creates really capable Warf Fighters because that's how you protect your country that's how you go out and and do what you got to do but when you come out of that when you sort of what's the word it's almost like when you it's like you enter this this

Matrix of thinking when you go through training and you become like willing and able to to to fight Wars basically but when you begin to fracture and you begin to sort of realize that you want to do something else with your life you have to like kind of come to terms with what you have been doing and the way you've been thinking about it you begin to view who you were as a seal as a person you don't for me only I was not proud of the person I had become I had sort of really

leaned into being as aggressive and as like you know like Alpha as I possibly could be not with my teammates but just in doing the job that I had sort of drifted down a path that I wasn't very proud of and I think that realizing that this wasn't a fit for me like being in the seals even though I got medically retired I think I realized it wasn't a fit for me and I would have gotten out whether or not I was medically retired it was really difficult to cope with that loss of identity you

still have those demons yeah but I go to therapy for them and shout out to Vinnie shoran who actually he's based in the UK uh he's my therapist uh he's awesome we haven't really delved too deeply into the military stuff but yeah I think that it's it's something that will always be with me I certainly when I think about having served I'm very proud and I'm proud to have been I'm a veteran now and I the people I worked with were incredible even the people that hate me now like it doesn't mean I think any

less of them there there's there are incredible people in the military I think that I just sort of it wasn't a fit for me it was like I I I thought the military was but it was the seal thing that Drew me in and in many ways this is going to sound weird but but I was sort of lucky enough uh to get to deploy to Afghanistan and actually have a combat deployment because many people what happens is they go to like a war fighting unit like a special operations unit and then they never see

combat and it's not because they made any decision it's just the way it goes and those people it's sort of like they have this unchecked box yeah but it's not their decision and so in a way I was given this gift that sounds horrible to say it that way but I don't know how else to say it of getting to sort of do the job in real life but there are sort of like and to anybody who's listening that's done multiple deployments like look at look at this guy like I don't claim to have like

oh I've done 87 deployments and this is my experience it's just from like I had one combat tour one but it was enough to show me that like that isn't what I was cut out to do and I think that but I still did those things and I still was that person and now as a civilian sort of reconciling that I'm such a different person now in a good way I've taken all the best qualities I possibly could and I've poured them into this person I'm trying to be a good husband and a good dad

and I'm trying to do all the right things but it's like I have this part of me that it's just crazy to me that I was ever in Navy SEAL it's crazy everybody has their demons to some degree whether it's you know it's a spectrum of how strong those demons can be and how how much control they can have over your decisions um what have you learned about dealing with demons that might be of any because you've been to therapy lot a lot of people haven't um a lot of people maybe even haven't arrived at

the awareness that they they need to go yet what have you learned about dealing with demons that might be useful to anybody listening that uh you can't talk yourself out of them it's if you a demon to me is something that if you begin to have those thoughts and you feel them creeping in and you tell yourself stop thinking about it I don't want to I don't want to deal with that I don't want to think about that if you have those thoughts in your life that even just the slightest beginning of a thought about

that thing starts to creep into your head and your and your reaction to it is not now I don't want to do this I can't do this right now it's all happening in your head if that's something that you deal with that's a demon it's something that is like the uncontrollable thought that comes into your head it usually happens at the same time of the day or same thing that triggers it and if your reaction to it is oh my God I can't think about this thing like that is a demon in your life and

you are not going to be able at least in my opinion long term to Simply convince yourself that that's not a demon it is a demon it doesn't matter if it's rational or not uh for me I have several that sort of creep into my life but the only way I have found to sort of cope with them is to sort of not embrace them because that's not what you do is to talk about them with someone who it's it's it's cathartic to talk about it with a therapist but it's even more cathartic to almost

hear yourself talking about it like you actually have for me specifically like I have things that I've said in therapy that I can't believe I'm saying out loud that are so like personal and intimate and so tied to like deep insecurities and pains in my life but it's only in that environment with like a a third party who's neutral in a private setting that these things just come to the surface and I'm saying these things and the beautiful thing about having a great therapist is their whole gig is they're they're listening and interpreting and providing

perspective they're not trying to like tell you oh that's that's not a thing it's like well have you thought about it this way Chu me that perfect t one of the things that I think about all the time because my life is quite hectic and busy is how to manage my energy load and as a podcaster you kind of have to manage your energy in such a way that you can have these articulate conversations with experts on subjects you don't understand and this is why perfect Ted has become so important in my life because previously

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in Fred SAA Journey today your father you mentioned earlier that your you you were raised by a single mother in the basement at least yeah has how has your father been a sort of key figure in the man that you are and we talk about demons sure and the demons that you have so you know it's funny my dad and I recently have sort of had a a Resurgence um he and I sort of had I guess you could call call it a falling out um I was very close with my dad growing up my

parents split when I was 13 and even though I was living with my mom and sisters my dad was a very active part of my life it isn't like I didn't see him again but we had like a good relationship me and my dad and then when I left for the Navy it came after I I had found a way to graduate college and I was talking about law school a little bit and I think my dad he was like that's great my son like he turned it around he's he's got this this career in

mind that seems like a really strong idea and I sort of sprung it on him and my mom and my sis my sisters that I'm like actually no when I graduate college I'm going to enlist in the Navy and try to be a Navy SEAL I hadn't really talked about it with them at all I mean I'm exaggerating but it was a very quick turnaround and I I didn't want to talk to them about it because I knew they'd say one why will you make it through and two why are you doing this and so

when I began talking about it like right at the end of my college career like literally I'm getting ready to enlist my dad I think he couldn't quite wrap his mind around the idea that I really was going to do this for for reasons that make sense to me now that didn't at the time like it's his son if you're successful that's not good you're going to be a Navy SEAL like going to war if you're not successful and you wash out a training you're stuck in the N you're stuck in the Navy in the

sense that you don't get to pick another job you kind of become needs of the Navy and you have to go do like these crappy jobs for like four years nobody likes being stuck if they they don't have what's called a rate it's like your job so it's like he's viewing it as both outcomes sort of come with big negatives but the way it came out to me was he doesn't believe in me he doesn't believe I can be a Navy SEAL like he thinks I'm not going to make it that I'm sure that was

not what he intended but that's the way I interpreted it and it marked like a a departure in our relationship in 2010 I left for the for boot camp and while he and I absolutely maintained some level of contact from 20 10 until quite literally like a few months ago I barely spoke to my dad by choice I had a lot of ill will towards him I always just sort of felt like he doesn't believe in me he also he got remarried and he has and he's you know he got remarried as a family it

just I I had a lot of resentment towards him that some was founded much of it was not and it sort of became something that it never was which is I had it in my head that my dad doesn't believe in me that really was the thought and it actually helped Propel me to at times there were there were days in Seal training where I I would literally think to myself if I don't make it I can't even fathom what it would be like to face my dad who in my head at the time I'm

like he'd be like told you so like the idea of that it made my skin crawl you know so it in many ways my relationship with my dad it had become sort of negative for many years but it it sort of maintained a pretty healthy chip on my shoulder that pushed me to sort of prove him wrong in a sense uh but with self-awareness recently like very recently through therapy with my boy Vinnie shoran uh and through some sort of the world lining up he and I sort of reconnected uh and we actually had some

Frank discussions about that and it turns out that no my dad just literally was worried about his son and felt like I didn't like him or love him and we sort of drifted and life happens I had my life he had his life but we've reconnected now and I I'm I'm happy for it there's a lot of men that aren't at the place yet where they they'll speak openly about their demons and how they're feeling and their emotions and stuff especially I mean people that have been in combat and that seen as big tough guys

right sure what would you say to those men that maybe you know because we all feel things sure most of us don't have the tools to know how to talk about it we don't have the the environment maybe we don't have friends or Outlets where we can talk about it and a lot of men don't feel like they can even I was one of those men that probably until about the last I'd say two years I would never tell my partner if I was having a bad day if I was feeling bad if I was

anxious in anyway if I was struggling with something I would always try and shield everyone from it like I thought as a man my job was to just take it yes take everything absorb hold but what I came to learn is that it is coming out yeah but in with unintended consequences in in unexpected ways it's coming out somewhere maybe in my mood um maybe in my health maybe in my habits um maybe in my search for quick fixes of dopamine it's going to come out so I ran the experiment one day of just like

sitting my partner down and saying look I'm I haven't been honest with you this is how I feel and this is what's happened this is what I'm going through yeah and it was such a important pivotal experiment in my life because see that you know what I mean yeah I do so I'm just wondering what Journey you've been on with opening up I think that taking men specifically as an example you sort of have like the the societ the these socially acceptable things that can be demons for you that maybe we don't talk about them

but if you did no one's really going to bat an ey like turns out I hate my job and you know it turns out I I I don't love my partner okay these are bad things but they're things that if you brought them up no one's going to question your manhood they're not going to question you know things that that Society views as important right it's the stuff that is super personal to you that's like could be potentially embarrassing those are the things that are your real demons I'm not saying those other things aren't demons

they are they are but if you can't talk about those things they will dog you your whole life they really will and so I think it's not about you need to go sign up for therapy and go talk to a therapist but I do think that like you mentioned it yourself you have to be able to sort of like unburden yourself and part of that is is simply talking about it like uh I had one this is not really a demon but to give people a sense who are watching this of like how comfortable I

am being forward about things that I struggle with so oddly enough one of the reasons that I was also drawn to the military believe it or not was I struggle mightily to urinate in front of other people just publicly going to the bathroom in front of other people it's not like it's destroying my life but it's uncomfortable like it's easier for me if I'm alone right I knew this about myself at a young age don't have a reason for it but like I knew when I was like in high school or like in college like

I would go to a bathroom that was Private because that was easier for me and as I got older I was like that's not really that normal that this is happening to me and so part of the reason I was interested in the Navy is they drug test you and they do it really publicly and it was like in order to deal with this I have to go into an organization that literally will force me to have to urinate in front of other people but like for me it's sort of like facing these things that

are hyper personal like inability to pee in front of other people which you know I've overcome but you have to be willing to sort of identify those things and in my case I talked to my wife about it before I joined the Navy and she's like okay I talked to my therapist about it recently as well but it's sort of like that's a really specific personal thing that if I brought that up in in a casual conversation I'm sure there are people that could actually relate to it but most people would be like this a

little uncomfortable you brought that up but like everybody's got stuff that falls into that category maybe not specifically but you everybody's got weird insecurities and they've got things that drive their decisions that would be to them deeply embarrassing to bring up that is the reason you have to bring them up because they will they will dog you and they will always be there until you deal with them and for me it's been helpful in cathartic to State them out loud and then do something about them the other thing I've noticed is that when I don't

State them especially in the context of a relationship is you live misunderstood yeah that's true so like let's play out the scenario that in you struggle to urinate in front of other people your M your wife might always start to wonder why you don't want to go to certain places or when you're in those places you're acting strange she'll misunderstand that is maybe he's X Y and Z and then you're dealing with a problem you're dealing with another set of problem he's like he's cheating on me no no it's like actually it was just we

didn't have an environment a safe space where we could talk about the actual issue so I've created like five other issues and I have that in my life where I'm like Fu if I just told the truth it's a shame that sometimes I have to get to the like bust up moment turn around and say you've got this totally wrong and the reason why you've got this totally wrong is because I didn't tell you the truth yeah and it's LED you off down a path which is really unfortunate it's caused us more hurt than me

just being honest with you yeah but it's I'm not saying it's going to be easy I think um like many of the things you've described in your story first you have to just take one step in that direction I'm not saying like pull your partner in and like offload or offload with therapist today it's just you have to run the experiment yeah to build the evidence and have it compound and go actually this is a better life than secrecy keeping everything to yourself you you know there's some when I interview people there's always questions I

know that they get asked all the time yeah and I'm like do I ask him the question that I know he probably gets asked all the time but you're so good at telling stories yeah you really really are great at telling thank um so there's really two questions I wanted to end with I guess we we've got a couple of minutes but sure the first question is to be a great Storyteller and we're all telling stories whether we know it or not yep is there any principles that you've come to learn that you could give

me to tell better stories yeah uh so I would say Obviously the medium by which you're telling the story matters but if we're talking about literally speaking a story telling a story and assuming you have people listening to that story right in front of you which is the a medium by which many of us tell stories telling our friends telling our family members to tell a really good story it has less to do with the content of the story and more to do with the delivery of that story when I told you the deot past

story I was fully committed to telling you that story I didn't care if you thought it was interesting or not I I thought it was interesting enough that I was going to give you my hand gestures I'm like gonna make sure I harp on the details that I find really interesting but it's like a level of commitment to telling that story like that's the key it's commit to be like you have to be in the story and like for example when I'm uh when I did the live tour like that's the purest form of you're

either going to be awkward up there and like get through it or you're going to [ __ ] own the story be in the stories and tell it to those people right there and they're going to hear what I want to tell them so it's like the delivery it's not just practice and get your words right hardly I dude I don't even use a script when I tell stories I look at the story I learn the story I internalize the story and then I inhabit the story and when I tell you the story it should

almost feel like I was there like that is the level of commitment you need and I would say also like with regards to General storytelling it really is true that it has less to do with like finessing the language so it's perfect or getting your script exactly right it's like I would say when it comes to most stories you you need to make sure there's some sort of payoff at the end of the story which is sort of like storytelling 101 but if you look at the way newspapers structure stories for those who maybe don't

read the new newspaper or generally here here's how it goes this thing happened and now I'm going to tell you the details of what that thing is and how it happened right that that's not good storytelling that's that's great for getting information across but all too often if you look on like YouTube or if you look at other people who tell like you know mysteries for example sometimes in their their header it'll be like you know crazy like golden you know skeleton found in cave in Russia and like actually that's pretty compelling Maybe maybe I'd

read that but it's like you Suzanne murdered you know in in London like and then you click on it till they find out what happened but it's like you don't want your audience to already in certain in certain cases you don't necessarily want your audience to know where the story is going they might have a very strong inclination that Suzanne's going to get killed at the end of the story or there's going to be a gold skeleton found in Russia but being a Storyteller your job is to keep people invested and to build tension and

to get them like ready for the payoff that the end any story can have a Twist at the end it it depends on how you tell it like it isn't like some stories have payoffs and some don't absolutely not you can use point of view you can you can inhabit aspects of the story that give different lenses into the story but own the story when you tell it and ensure that there's some type of payoff at the end whatever it is like when I told you the de law past story like ultimately the goal is

to get you to see the wow all these conflicting things there's pictures of this and that but the Russian government set an unknown uh unnatural force is responsible and then close the case the whole point of that is to say all these crazy things that are objective they objectively happened that we have data we have pictures we have all these things i' I've demonstrated that to you and clearly something's wrong and they sealed the case and no one could look into it the whole point is to make you think what is going on over there

but if I had said guess what there's this case that's sealed and and no one will look into it here's what happened it's the same story but I've opened with the reveal you got to do it the other way so pay off at the end and own and own the storytelling aspect of it I'll go and tell people to check it out on your channel but is there a particular story on your channel that is this was the cliche question um that is your favorite oh man it's like asking your favorite kids right I would

say the story that I'm the most proud of in terms of just how difficult it was to piece it together is the the headless Valley and it's actually in our graphic novel as well um it isn't that it's literally the best story but it's a story that is a composite of a whole bunch of anecdotes over about a hundred years there's this I know don't have have time but there's this place in Canada called the Northwest Territories and so it's it's a part of Canada that's already very remote and it's just Wilderness and forests and

there's this section called the Northwest Territories which is even more remote it's it's as big as Germany but Germany has like 50 million residents and this has like 50,000 people there so it's like no one lives there and within the Northwest Territories there's this Valley this like River that cuts through this beautiful Valley called the nahani valley which has been now dubbed The Headless Valley because over the course of like a hundred years all these people who have gone into this Valley have turned up headless they've been but like in the most bizarre ways and

you and also you can't really get into this Valley it's very difficult to do you can't fly there you can't hike there you have to either take a boat upstream and literally carry a boat up a couple waterfalls and then continue going upstream or there is an Overland hike but it's like 70 miles of treacherous terrain so it's like really hard to get there it's totally remote and the only other people that ever lived there were the the nahani tribe and they one day somebody was actually there on a Hunting Expedition they noticed that the

Nani tribe which made up like hundreds of people they were camped out along this this River they disappeared overnight and literally nobody knows what happened to them they left behind their all their equipment all their their housing it's all it was left they just vanished no one knows what happened to them and there's rumors of like white white creatures wandering the woods uh but I took like seven or eight anecdotes chronologically and pieced them all together and created what in my opinion is the most comprehensive Narrative of what could be happening in the Headless Valley

and I'm very proud of the way it was written and put together and it's in it's the first story in the graphic novel as well we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next not knowing who they're leaving it for and the question left for you is what do you see as the most desirable future for the New Media podcast world I would say that what I love about the podcast space that I hope continues is that it is not corporate in the sense that it's totally

like uh anybody can start a podcast we're seeing so many podcasts but it's it's like podcast rise based on the Merit of those shows versus uh like there's not a lot of corporate pushing behind podcasts it's sort of like the corporations show up and take the podcast or try to license podcasts that have already sort of made their their place but they don't have a lot of influence over who or what they do so it's like it's this great meritocracy of content where the podcasts are growing and succeeding based largely on Merit and skill and

they're covering all these topics that are like so far-reaching so it's like it just feels sort of authentic I know there are plenty of corporate podcasts out there too and there's nothing wrong with that but I hope that podcasting continues to be this sort of like how in the world are like The Joe Rogan podcast and like you know whatever the random podcast you want to name like these like Titans of industry but it's like it's so random but it's like it's like the beautiful product of just like human like authenticity and willingness to talk

about stuff I love it I think that it's a very authentic place that has not been corporatized yet amen John thank you so much for everything that you do um thank you it's really really incredible it's really incredible you run a phenomenal media company which I don't think people truly understand Nick wit's does you and Nick Runner phenomenal Media company which I think I don't know if people understand the scale and size of that Media company but it's truly impressive and you have this awesome graphic novel yes in the graphic novel it's a New York

Times bestseller uh it's an anthology of Nine Stories it's it's beautiful uh and we intend to continue making more of them so definitely check out the graphic novel makes a great holiday gift it is absolutely gorgeous the illustrations and the all the I think you call them illustrations the illustrations are phenomenal AB proud of it thank you so much for all that you do I'm someone that loves is absolutely enthralled by all these stories I love mysteries I love Unsolved Mysteries and I love True Crime so and as we were saying before we got recording

me and my uh partner when she lets me listen to these things in bed and it helps me sleep and your channel is is by far in way the best at this because you're such a gifted Storyteller thank and as you've been speaking to me today I've been thinking Ah that's I've been trying to piece together what makes you so brilliant as a Storyteller um I guess it's a long journey a family influence and generally probably you know the experience that you've had so thank you for what you do thank you for your time today

as well and it's been an honor to learn about your story of reinvention but also to hear some of these stories which by the way I need to go and figure out this [ __ ] what's it called dein pass the deav pass the diatlov pass pretty well thank you and it's an honor to be on your show really thank you so much for having me I appreciate you I'm going to let you into a little bit of a secret you're probably going to think me and my team are a little bit weird but I

can still remember to this day when Jima from my team posted on slack that she changed the scent in this studio and right after she posted it the entire office clapped in our slack Channel and this might sound crazy but at the diary ofo this is the type of 1% Improvement we make on our show and that is why the show is the Way It Is by understanding the power of compounding 1% you can absolutely change your outcomes in your life it isn't about drastic Transformations or quick wins it's about the small consistent actions that

have a lasting change in your outcomes so two years ago we started the process of creating this beautiful diary and it's truly beautiful inside there's lots of pictures lots of inspiration and motivation as well some interactive elements and the purpose of this diary is to help you identify stay focused on develop consistency with the 1% that will ultimately change your life we're only going to do a limited run of these Diaries so if you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team then head to the diary.com right

now I'll link it below [Music] ah [Music]